Enchanted Forest
"Did you do it?" Little John asked when Robin came back the next day. "You're not dead. That means it worked, right?"
Robin shook his head. His friend noticed how tired and shocked he looked.
"So the queen lives," said Little John.
Robin nodded. "I convinced her I was just there to steal from her. She didn't suspect an assassination. But I was sentenced to death."
"You escaped?" asked Will Scarlet, their newest recruit.
"No. She let me go."
That got him a moment of shocked silence and half a dozen jaws hanging open.
"Okay, just let me make sure I'm getting this right," said Little John. "The Evil Queen let you go?"
"Yes. I don't know why. I just know that she came to speak with me, and when she left, the door to my cell wasn't locked. It's probably a trap. I almost didn't come back, in case I was leading her to you, but …"
His gaze drifted to Roland, who was asleep in Friar Tuck's arms.
"I had to risk it."
"You can try again," said Will Scarlet. "You can still avenge Marian's death."
Robin nodded. But what he didn't tell them was the he wasn't sure he wanted to anymore. The queen had been everything he expected: angry, vicious, and undeniably evil. And yet, something within him didn't want to hurt her now that he had seen the way her eyes softened when he mentioned his son. That part of him was an idiot begging for another death sentence, and he knew it. But it was there nonetheless.
Storybrooke
Regina had never met anyone quite like Robert Locksley before. It was easy to guess, of course, who he had been in their world. She had never met Robin Hood, but with a name like that and a shop called The Merry Outdoorsman, there was only one person he could be. She would have expected the famous thief to be … well, dirtier. He looked and acted like a gentleman, albeit a rugged outdoorsy type of gentleman. Perhaps the curse had improved him. Or perhaps … well, it didn't really matter. He had sold her a tent and some camping equipment, and that was the extent of his role in her life. The queen didn't have time for a common thief, even if the queen was now a small-town mayor and the thief worked in retail.
That night at dinner, she told Henry that she had bought their camping equipment, and he gave her a long, hard look that made her feel like he knew something she didn't.
"Who sold it to you?"
"His name was Robert Locksley."
With a sly smile, Henry asked, "What did you think of him?"
"He was nice, I suppose," said Regina. "Why? Does it matter?"
As he shrugged and continued to pick at his lasagna, Regina realized what this might be about.
"Henry, are you trying to find me a boyfriend?" The words sounded silly as they came out, but he didn't deny it. He just shrugged his shoulders and took another bite of lasagna.
"Answer me, Henry."
He turned and glared at her, and she couldn't understand the weird mix of emotions in his eyes.
"Haven't you ever wanted love?"
"I love you," Regina said. "I don't need any other kind of love, and a boyfriend is just not going to happen. Ever. So if you're looking for a father figure, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere."
She might have been too harsh with her words, because his eyes grew sad, and he turned away, going back to his lasagna in silence.
A few days later, he disappeared.
He came back with a blonde woman who he claimed was his birth mother, a woman in a leather jacket who tossed her precious son away when he was just a baby and had the audacity to demand to know whether Regina loved him. Whether his mother, who helped him with his math homework and soothed his fevers and woke up in the middle of the night to comfort him if he had a bad dream, loved him. Regina stared at her, seething with anger, imagining the fireball she would throw at this insolent stranger if she had her magic again.
"Of course I love him."
And of course, it wouldn't change Emma Swan's decision to stay.
Regina flipped through the pages of the storybook, and the familiar story unfolded before her. Snow White. The poisoned apple. The curse. But there was another story, one that she didn't remember and could hardly believe was true. The story of a lion tattoo and a love that was almost – almost, but not quite – strong enough to overcome evil. The story of soul mates. And when she saw how it ended, her heart nearly stopped.
When she saw what she did – and what she couldn't do – she slammed the book shut with tears in her eyes.
It couldn't be.
But something in her gut told her it was.
She sent Henry off to school and drove down to The Merry Outdoorsman. An enormous man with a scraggly brown beard stood behind the counter, his nametag reading "John Little". Ha. It was obvious who he was.
"Where is Rob – Robert Locksley?" she demanded, almost asking for Robin Hood before she caught herself. "Is he working today?"
Little John nodded. "He's around here somewhere. Hey, Rob! ROB!"
Robin – Robert – appeared from across the little store, near an aisle of fishing gear. His eyes lit up when he saw her. He looked just like the man in the book, the man she had supposedly … no. It wasn't real. It was some sort of horrible trick, and even if it was real, what now? She had made her choice.
But maybe Storybrooke was a second chance.
"Hello," she said. As she approached him, she felt like a nervous teenager. "I wanted to talk to you about my camping trip with my son. Maybe you could give me some recommendations on where to go?"
"Of course, Milady," he said. Just as if he was in the Enchanted Forest, except that there, he would have had to call her Your Majesty.
She listened as he told her about a place in the woods where he liked to take his son camping, and she smiled. A part of her wondered if Henry even cared about going camping at all, or if it was all about that book and getting her to meet Robin Hood again. But that didn't really matter. To her surprise, she was glad she had met him.
